Strategic Positioning for RPA at Scale

Establishing an end-to-end organizational strategy for RPA is one of the keys to implementing RPA at scale. A recent report by HFS Research and KPMG found that a major factor impeding implementing RPA at scale is the absence of an enterprise-wide strategy. It’s also not just enough to have a clear, communicated, and transparent vision across the enterprise; the strategy itself must be in sync with the organization’s business objectives and strategic direction, ideally led by a C-level champion.

Without an aligned and clear enterprise-wide vision, RPA efforts can become tactical and reliant on low-hanging fruit. The pilot project often closely resembles the full-scale implementation where the only identifiable difference is the slight increase in the number of simple, swivel-chair business processes being automated that deliver little return of value. Without an enterprise-wide strategy that is in-line with the organization’s larger business objectives, the complex, end-to-end business processes where the real ROI resides can never be automated.

To successfully strategically position RPA, a rudimentary recipe might look like the following:

Explicitly define how RPA contributes to the organization’s business objectives
Establish universal best practices
Set up an RPA Center of Excellence (CoE) to implement, govern, maintain, and scale RPA efforts across the enterprise
Gain buy-in from both the C-suite and enterprise employees